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New statue in London, attributed to Banksy, of a suited man, blinded by a flag

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: New statue in London, attributed to Banksy, of a suited man, blinded by a flag

#92

Banksy is the patron saint of the “I’m 13 and this is deep” mentality.

He's also king of the "I'll criticize the west but I'll turn a blind-eye to non-democratic countries' wrongdoings" . A trait shared with virtually all intellectuals and artists in the west. There are fights worth fighting: for example there are 300 million women alive who have undergone forced genital mutilation. 300 million ain't cheap change. There are also hundreds of millions of people who applauded the killing o…

That's a lot of imaginary flaws in imaginary people, with imaginary numbers as scaffolding.

The moral posture you're criticising is not actually a thing, I personally don't know of any Western intellectual who criticises the West but is fine with FGM for example. But it seems that the fault you find in them is that when they criticise the West, for example, they don't also add a list of grievances against all the other countries (but surely they'd have to speak for 10 hours every time they open their mouths?).

It's also funny how you take the 30,000 Iranian civilians killed at face value, but don't talk about the wrongs of the British empire. And you didn't even mention North Korea once. You see the issue with your reqs?

Re: New statue in London, attributed to Banksy, of a suited man, blinded by a flag

#93

Banksy is the patron saint of the “I’m 13 and this is deep” mentality.

He's also king of the "I'll criticize the west but I'll turn a blind-eye to non-democratic countries' wrongdoings" . A trait shared with virtually all intellectuals and artists in the west. There are fights worth fighting: for example there are 300 million women alive who have undergone forced genital mutilation. 300 million ain't cheap change. There are also hundreds of millions of people who applauded the killing o…

What do you want the artists to do about it? Part of art's power is shining a light on something we don't notice day to day. Most westeners are against mutilation, what would the art say?

Art will always be about speaking truth to power, and that power will usually be the one closest felt. There's not much value in a swede speaking truth to Nigerian warlords.

Re: New statue in London, attributed to Banksy, of a suited man, blinded by a flag

#96
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Israel and Palestine are blinded by ideology. It is a very common failure mode for people.

[flagged]

So ... Hamas does not want to do ethnic cleansing and attempted that a couple of times, but simply were not as powerful to have a bigger impact?

Re: New statue in London, attributed to Banksy, of a suited man, blinded by a flag

#97

Banksy is the patron saint of the “I’m 13 and this is deep” mentality.

He's also king of the "I'll criticize the west but I'll turn a blind-eye to non-democratic countries' wrongdoings" . A trait shared with virtually all intellectuals and artists in the west. There are fights worth fighting: for example there are 300 million women alive who have undergone forced genital mutilation. 300 million ain't cheap change. There are also hundreds of millions of people who applauded the killing o…

There's a lot wrong with the world, but it seems not unreasonable for people to more strongly critique things 1) they feel they have some responsibility for or 2) that directly impact them or 3) where their criticisms are more likely to result in positive change.

Re: New statue in London, attributed to Banksy, of a suited man, blinded by a flag

#98

I think it's a reasonable statue. But does anyone else think it's a bit obvious, more so than his other work? Like there is no doubt on the meaning at all, it's all right there on the surface level.

> there is no doubt on the meaning at all Which flag? Or, what kind of flag? Or does it matter?

Flags overwhelmingly represent nations, groups considering themselves nations, that were nations or have some kind of individual governmental status.

If you asked 100 people to imagine a particular flag to attach to that statue, 95% of them are going to be current, unrecognized, or former states.

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